Childhood vaccines are safe. Seriously.

Review of more than 20,000 scientific titles and 67 papers finds no evidence linking vaccines, autism

Jen Christensen and Nadia Kounang |
7/3/2014, 6 a.m.

continued  An increasing number of parents over the years have opted out of getting their children vaccinated. And that may be having a negative impact on the community's health.

A study found that large clusters of children who had not been vaccinated were close to the large clusters of whooping cough cases in the 2010 California epidemic. While California typically has higher vaccination rates than the rest of the country, that state is dealing with yet another whooping cough epidemic.

This spring also saw an 18-year high number of measles cases in the United States. The largest outbreak was in Ohio where the virus spread quickly among the Amish, who are mostly unvaccinated. This outbreak was a real surprise to health officials who thought that the infectious disease was thought to have been eliminated from the United States in 2000.

The editorial accompanying this latest study suggests doctors, who parents typically trust to tell the truth about medical information, need to use this study to speak with confidence about the importance of vaccinating children.

"Looking at all these mounds of data -- there is still no data that show an association that shows vaccine and autism," said Brown. "I would love it to close this chapter and move on. I don't think it will. But the more research, the more we learns about autism, the more we can reassure parents that there are no links here."